Urban Land Institute, November 9, 2015

Since the first dot-com era, technology firms have rewritten the rules of workplace design, eschewing traditional office towers in favor of renovated warehouses and shrinking individual desk space to make room for more collaborative areas. Today’s tech companies increasingly internalize the mix of uses found in cities, incorporating elements as varied as cafés and vegetable gardens. Design inspiration may come from a building’s historic elements, a company’s founding stories, and the interests of the workers themselves, lending the workplace a feeling of authenticity and personalization.

The following ten projects—all completed during the past three years—include adapted textile factory buildings and liquor distribution warehouses, workplaces with amphitheaters and secret rooms, and a net-zero-energy structure.

FileMaker, October 2015

With the rise of e-commerce, more companies than ever before need to ship products to far corners of the globe, spurring demand for enterprise logistics experts such as Shipwire. A division of Ingram Micro, Shipwire is the leading provider of commerce and fulfillment solutions worldwide. Providing both direct-to-consumer and business-to-business solutions, Shipwire provides instant access to Ingram’s 122+ warehouses via more than 100 ecommerce connections, including Amazon, eBay and Shopify.

Being there for every customer requires fast, intuitive access to information. Rather than having customer-facing representatives undergo the time-consuming process of combing through a backend Salesforce CRM system, Shipwire integrated Salesforce with the FileMaker Platform. Today, a custom FileMaker solution ties into Salesforce to cull and analyze the most urgent data and present it via intuitive reports, charts and graphs.

StreetInsider, October 13, 2015

Ingram Micro Inc. (NYSE: IM) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement under which, subject to closing conditions detailed below, Ingram Micro will acquire DOCdata Nederland B.V. and DOCdata International B.V. (“Docdata”), the e-commerce fulfillment business of publically-traded, Netherlands-based, DOCDATA N.V. (ENXTAM: DOCD) for approximately $175 million. Docdata is one of the leading European providers of order fulfilment, returns logistics and online payment services, providing critical commerce solutions to major retailers, brands and promising start-ups. Docdata currently handles between 125,000 and 250,000 orders on a daily basis, with major operations in Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The company is expected to contribute in excess of $150 million in annual services revenue to Ingram Micro and to contribute 5 to 7 cents to 2016 non-GAAP earnings per share.

Eyefortransport, September 2015

The supply chain is currently enjoying incredible change as technology, new innovative business models and start-ups are changing the way goods arebrought to market. This graphic explores some of the companies in some ofthe main stages of the supply chain that are flexing their muscles to disrupt,change, and give customers what they want when they want it.

Also, this might help the industry to stop using ‘The Uber’ of this or the ‘Airbnb of that’.

Forbes, September 29, 2015

Many men can’t find a way to show their personal style at work, thanks to stuffy office dress codes. Boris Vaisman, 28, and his brother Albert, 22, aim to change that at Soxy. Their two-person, Toronto-based business is on track to bring in seven-figure revenue this year by delivering five pairs of cheerful-patterned socks –think bright yellow with big red polka dots or hot pink with little blue mustache icons — to customers’ mailboxes each month for $45. “Socks bring a lot of joy and confidence to men,” says Boris.

Meanwhile, the business, which has relied on outsourcing and contract help to expand, gives them the freedom to live a very mobile existence. “For us it’s all about building a business which provided us the opportunity to travel, explore and live remotely,” says Boris.

TechCrunch, September 6, 2015

Facebook, Google and Twitter have to deal with outrageous amounts of spam and abuse. They hire teams of engineers to stop trolls, outwit bad actors and otherwise keep their walled gardens free of misanthropes. It’s a costly business.

Pete Hunt, Josh Yudaken and Julian Tempelsman worked on anti-fraud technologies at Facebook, Instagram and Google; they dealt with phishing, hacking and other challenges on a daily basis. Huge teams of Full-Time Employees, or FTEs, are charged with stopping these attacks at other companies, and it’s easy to imagine millions of dollars per year being spent on the problem. When Hunt, Yudaken and Tempelsman realized that most startups couldn’t afford to have anti-abuse teams of that scale, they quit to start a company called Smyte.